The ongoing commercialization of data processing devices has generally resulted in successive generations of devices having ever higher rates of functionality and interconnectivity. To this end, mass storage capabilities are being increasingly incorporated into a number of different types of devices, particularly with hand-held portable devices such as cell phones, digital cameras, personal data assistants (PDAs), etc.
A disc drive is one type of data storage device that generally stores data on one or more rotatable magnetic recording media. A corresponding array of data transducers (heads) are selectively moved across the surfaces of the media to transduce data therewith. Servo data patterns are often provided on the media to enable a transducer to be correctly positioned to carry out a data I/O operation.
With the continued demand for data processing devices with ever higher levels of performance, there remains a continual need for improvements in the manner in which data patterns are detected in a transmitted data sequence. 